Weekends you might find Jacqueline âJacquieâ Hawkins taking a break from grading or grant writing to stroll through a local farmerâs market. Sheâs a foodie, but she knows vegetables donât have to be Instagram-ready to be good. Instead, she thinks about the labor that went into growing them.
That mindset is a throwback to her upbringing in a small Scottish fishing village where everyone was expected to contribute. Everyoneâs efforts were valued, too.
âEquity was ingrained into us,â she said. âYou didnât denigrate others who were less capable. The expectation was you did your best.â
Those lessons inform her professional life as an associate professor of special populations and an Ed.D. program director at the ÍĂ×ÓĎČÉú College of Education.
Hawkinsâ leadership in transforming the Collegeâs Ed.D. program to become more rigorous and relevant recently earned her national recognition from the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. She received the organizationâs 2022 David G. Imig Distinguished Service Award, honoring her teaching, advising and research over a 35-year career at UH.
âIt has been the joy of my life to lead this kind of transformation of doctoral students,â Hawkins said upon accepting the award at CPEDâs conference in October. âAnd I am very, very fortunate to have hundreds of doctoral graduates who now are Houston-based or internationally-based who are going out and using improvement science techniques to make the world more just.â
Improvement science is a problem-solving approach â say, how to help a student who is struggling to read â that involves testing solutions in real time to improve not only individual efforts but the overall system. One key? Repeat the cycle frequently and adjust action plans if needed. âIt doesnât take a year to figure out if you have done the wrong thing,â Hawkins said.
Hawkinsâ work to match equity with academic rigor reflects the spirit of the University of Houston, said Robert McPherson, UHâs interim senior vice president for academic affairs and provost and former dean of the College of Education.
âOverseeing programmatic change at one of the nationâs most diverse public research institutions in the nationâs fourth-largest city, Dr. Hawkins has helped to advance educational equity to accelerate student success,â he said, noting that roughly two-thirds of the 1.2 million public schoolchildren in the greater Houston area are from historically marginalized populations.
The College of Educationâs professional leadership Ed.D. program offers specializations in various areas, including K-12, literacy and special populations. The special populations program faculty prepares professionals to work with children and adults with intellectual and other disabilities, as well as English language learners and gifted children. Mid-career teachers, school administrators and others such as nonprofit leaders represent the majority of the students.
Cathy Horn, interim dean of the College of Education, noted Hawkinsâ exceptional commitment to mentoring students.
âShe spends countless hours meeting with advisees working to ensure that they build strength and capacity and ultimately pride in the quality of their work,â Horn said. âUltimately, Jacquieâs acts of mentorship are about building a cadre of colleagues ready to join her in work that seeks to address the most pressing challenges faced by our educational sectors.â
Hawkins advises about 25 doctoral students a year while also leading research projects to advance the field. Most recently, Hawkins is serving as principal investigator on a grant from the Powell Foundation to prepare teachers to identify and support students with dyslexia or mental health challenges. Sheâs also co-principal investigator on two grants from the U.S. Department of Education: one to improve reading outcomes for struggling students and another to prepare special education leaders to work in high-need schools.
âResearch is a vehicle that helps with teaching,â she said. âI canât improve practice by myself. I need an army of students out there.â
Monica Martens, who earned her Ed.D. in 2021 and now works with the special populations faculty as a program manager, said Hawkins helps students pursue research that aligns with their professional roles, ensuring the work is relevant for busy professionals.
âShe gave me the time and space to find my own voice,â Martens said. âShe has a real knack for understanding how to help students make progressive improvements over two or three years.â
Carolyn Henry, who completed her doctorate last spring, said she gained insights she was able to use in her role as director of instruction for special programs at Harmony Charter Schools. When analyzing standardized test scores, for example, she looks beyond passing and failure rates to focus on growth. âItâs not changing the data, but itâs a matter of presentation and motivating teachers,â she said.
Hawkins brings a more intangible quality to her role as advisor, as well. Henry entered the program in the fall of 2019, becoming part of the first pandemic cohort. She was working full time in a suddenly virtual world, a single mother with twin teenage daughters.
âThere were times I thought, maybe this isnât the best time to do this, and Dr. Hawkins encouraged me by seeing who I was and helping me to see how capable I was,â she said. âIâve encountered a lot of challenges as far as completing school. Dr. Hawkins understood that as someone who came from a difficult background herself. We connected on that level, as far as persevering.â
Hawkins was a first-generation college student, relying on government grants and stipends to earn a degree in business and later an education degree in Aberdeen. Without the grants, she said, neither she nor her brothers would have been able to attend college and earn professional success.
She has spent the past four decades paying it forward.
She worked with students with intellectual disabilities as part of her teacher training, drawing upon her experiences as a child. âIt wasnât called special education when I was in school, but I did know I had gifts I was fortunate to have,â she said. âAnd my job was to help. I see special education and special populations and the Ed.D. as a way of helping other people look at things through a lens of improvement and how can we position ourselves to help people make the progress they want.â
She was teaching high school business when she met Don Hawkins, a Houston native and computer scientist who spent his career working for energy companies. The couple married and moved to Houston in the 1980s.
Texas high schools, she soon discovered, werenât looking for business teachers, so Hawkins enrolled in the UH masterâs program with a focus on the high-demand area of special education. She later earned a doctorate in the field, also from the UH College of Education.
âI am extremely happy with the academic career I have been able to carve out at the ÍĂ×ÓĎČÉú,â she said. âYou have to grow where youâre planted.â
âBy Jeannie Kever
âPhotos by Velvette Laurence (top photo) and courtesy image